We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

So what does a Master Persuader do when he needs to create a good first impression to last for years? He looks around for any opportunity that is visible, memorable, newsworthy, true to his brand, and easy to change.

Once again, we are seeing what is a core failing of technocracy. Public policy is about trade-offs. In a liberal democracy, the people, through their representatives, wrangle over these trade-offs and arrive at a compromise that satisfies most people well enough to keep the peace. Logic is not what drives these deliberations. Tradition, culture and vested interests play the leading roles. Smart people know how to create a better health system, for example, but getting everyone to go along with it is impossible.

BD, Merry Christmas and thank you for your website, which I have greatly enjoyed until the Zach phenomenon. One approach to life is to avoid toxic people (this is a personal choice, which is different from demanding institutional "safe spaces"). Now that Zach trolling is back, I will avoid Maggies Farm but sincerely wish you success and enjoyment in your work here.

Let me first say that you just don't know how much this pains me to admit this. But Zach is often right about things. Not necessarily his political philosophy but often in his citations.

However he is often intentionally obtuse and deceptive. He will state one thing and when called on it will pick through the nits to find something anything that seems to support something or other and then carefully never go back to the point he was unable to prove. He is often merely practicing debating techniques without regard to being correct or honest in what he says or what he knows to be true.

IMHO I would prefer no censorship and if someone writes something uncomfortable, inaccurate or offensive, then skip over it.

That is pretty sad that you allow a couple (3 - 4 who knows how many make up the Zach Borg, which says a lot about them) of trolls to run you off a website. Come on man. You need a safe space? Glad the men and women of America, post 7 December 1941, didn't run away.

And don't forget Canadians. It's not generally well known, but Canadian troops were sent to Hong Kong the fall of 1941, arriving in early November. The Japanese attacked not only Pearl Harbour, but also Hong Kong and Manila (Dec 8 their time, thanks to the International Date Line). The Hong Kong garrison (local troops plus the Brits, Indians, and Canadians) held out until Dec 25 (Black Christmas) when it finally surrendered. There were serious atrocities committed, of which the St Stephen's College massacre is remembered because nurses at the hospital there were targeted. Survivors ended up in Japan as POW's, and their treatment was such that those who survived to come home were never really well again.

Look at it this way. Some faceless commissar in the leftist hierarchy,or perhaps even George Soros himself, has deemed Maggie's Farm an important and influential enough part of the blogosphere that it has been assigned its own full-time troll(s). And this one (or more) is forced to do more than the standard leftist approach of spewing computer generated profanities and insults; somewhere there may even be an actual person involved. Fortunately, Americans have these folks on the run.

One of my old mentors and I used to commiserate about difficult students and administrators. Her advice was as relevant than as today: "Don't let the bastards get you down."

We all deal with things that need our attention. When good students don't understand a point I have muddled, I make sure that I clear it up for them. But some students just want to be disruptive to annoy the rest of us. I don't let that interference bother me like I used to.

Soros' trolls don't bother me. Like Jim said, if Soros thinks we are worth trolling, then we ARE doing the right thing and need to keep doing it. Viva free speech (at least as long we peons are allowed to talk back to the privileged of the world).

Zach is the MF court jester. If he/they/it doesn't amuse you, just scroll on by. Occasionally I find Zach amusing, and even comment now and then, usually tongue in cheek. Most of the time I just scroll on by.

Yep. I was 10. Playing cars with a neighbor kid around the roots of a giant oak by the driveway of the apartment house we lived in (four apartments, including the owner's). It was early afternoon. My Dad came walking down the street from the greenhouses he managed two blocks away, came up to us, and told us Japan had bombed Pearl and it looked like war. At 10 years of age, we thought it was going to be fun. That's how boys were in those days.

My Mom was a teenager whose family lived in Nuuanu (suburb of Honolulu). They didn't know what was going on, at first they thought it was some sort of military maneuvers. Then the bombs started coming down. Most of the damage in her neighborhood is now believed to have been caused by mis-timed anti-aircraft shells which came back to earth and exploded. A woman living near them in Nuuanu was killed when her house exploded. My Mom says the scariest time was the first night, when they didn't know if there was an invasion imminent. My grandfather gave everyone in the house hunting rifles or revolvers (I guess gun ownership was much more common then, but that was probably partly because my family owned a cattle ranch on another island on which they would have spent a lot of time hunting, etc.) In the middle of the night they heard gunfire near their home and thought the Japanese were coming. It was actually two columns of American troops, one coming up from Honolulu and the other coming over from Kaneohe/Kailua. They ran into each other in the dark and opened fire, each thinking the other was the enemy. Fortunately no one was killed or wounded before they figured it out.

My father-in-law was Japanese, born and raised in Hawaii. He was living in Chinatown and was a construction worker at Pearl Harbor. It being Sunday, he was at his boarding house when the attack started. At one point, he was looking out his window when a shell/bomb came down in the street intersection outside, killing people. The next day he showed up at work as usual. Suddenly, all the workers were surrounded by Marines with rifles and bayonets, and all workers of Japanese ancestry were pulled out, including him. They were all marched to the gate and told, "You Japs never come back here again." He never did get his tools back. After the attack, first he volunteered for the Territorial Guard, where those of Japanese descent were not allowed to carry guns but became the labor brigade with shovels, etc. Eventually, he and the others in the Territorial Guard of Japanese ancestry joined up with the 442 Regimental Combat Team made up of Japanese Americans and fought in Italy and France.

Hawaii is 5 hours behind PST, so 7 hours behind CST, so the news would have to be after 2PM CST. I recall the broadcast time was important in Stalag 17 for identifying the spy in the camp--he heard it about dinnertime, so NOT in the US.

People on campuses have been saying some awful things about Trump and Trump supporters/voters. I'm not a fan of banning speech, but ...

I fear the big issue is that Trump's provocative speech is undermining the Liberal Arts faculty goals of destroying any critical sense in their students. Trump says things, the media report on it, students read and consider it in contrast to what the faculty have "taught" them. Next thing you know, first one, then another of the students has an independent thought. If you don't nip that in the bud, freedom of thought, even if speech is still circumscribed, is breaking out all over campus. And that the academic cannot abide.

If producers can find a way to microwave oil shales in the Green River Formation, which sprawls across Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, the nation’s recoverable reserves could soar and energy independence could become more than an election slogan. Even with existing methods — strip-mining the shale and then cooking it, or injecting steam to cook the rock underground (hydraulic fracturing is useless here) — the formation contains enough oil to last the U.S. 165 years at current rates of consumption. Microwave extraction could goose those numbers even higher. After all, there are more than 4 trillion (with a “t”) barrels of oil in the Green River Formation.

"oil shales in the Green River Formation, which sprawls across Colorado, Utah and Wyoming"

These rocks host vast resources of oil as noted...extraction has always been the issue and this report is a big step in technology to tap those resources. If you do not think technology matters just read a little history of the Bakken in North Dakota...as a new geology grad student in 1970 my professor told us about this Bakken play in the Williston Basin of North Dakota and said it contained "lots of oil but was not recoverable with 1970's technology". Took 40 plus years but the technology (horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing) finally caught up.

I believe Dr. Carson truly wanted the job with HUD as it fits his present interests and foundation work. Having had my own experience as a consultant fighting to turn around a HUD-managed, gang-infested high-rise into a privately-owned showplace for the community, I know he will excel at this position.

He has the vision to turnaround a damaged department that has never fulfilled any promise to help residents jump-start new lives. For more insight, read about Catherine Austin Fitts' experience at HUD in "Dylan Read and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits," an on-line PDF. The government never intended for the department to help its targeted audience; it's only a place to launder drug money and perpetuate more government jobs. The good doctor will change all that, I'm sure.

After retiring from a career, I too took up consulting, trying to help smaller cities and towns cope with HUD in the '70s-90s. A big Amen to what you say. The only thing I would add is that HUD seemed to think its grantees and borrowers would cheat and steal at the first opportunity, and spent most of its time and effort trying to force compliance and prevent corruption. I hope Carson can create a positive atmosphere.

E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above: